'GOING GREEN'—OR GOING HIGHER?

BY CURT WAHLBERG

From global warming to pollution to species extinction, scientists have plenty of bleak predictions about the state of our environment. Many have even forecast a series of global catastrophes in the near future. And while there's certainly a lot of debate as to the accuracy of these predictions, few question why they are at the forefront of public thought. Former US Vice President Al Gore's Academy Award-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a testament to this public attention.

But there is good news amid the doom and gloom. People are taking small steps to protect the environment, such as driving more fuel-efficient vehicles and being more conscious about trash and recycling. Companies are wising up—even this year's Academy Awards show in Los Angeles announced it had "gone green" for the first time, by choosing supplies and vendor services that were environmentally friendly. Yet, in order to stem the tide of fear about our future on this planet, we're really in need of something more that just commendable human efforts.

Even if everyone were willing to modify his or her own behavior, the model of billions of people more efficiently consuming resources on a physical planet still doesn't help with sustainable solutions for the long term. Human neediness—a dependency on something that's limited—will always cause different forms of imbalance.

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